


A Study of Hallucinogenic, Mind-Altering, Performance-Enhancing, Psychotropic and Confoundingly Phantasmagoric Substance Usage at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

by yungdreams



Series: A Grand Study of Hogwarts and Its Peculiarity of Life [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drug Use, Gen, No Plot/Plotless, Psychotropic Drugs, Recreational Drug Use, Worldbuilding
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-14
Updated: 2016-05-14
Packaged: 2018-06-08 07:28:42
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,056
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6844912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yungdreams/pseuds/yungdreams
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An academic perusal of substance culture at the famous Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Study of Hallucinogenic, Mind-Altering, Performance-Enhancing, Psychotropic and Confoundingly Phantasmagoric Substance Usage at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry

Foreword  
Within this essay I will attempt to elucidate upon the various inner-workings of Hogwarts' drug culture; that elusive beast, always flitting around in the flowing robes of boarding-schools, ultimately forming a greater part of the creature itself. It is as endemic to these environs as the magic in the hallways and the passions lurking the spirits of these young witches and wizards.  
Hogwarts, founded in the 9th or 10th century and located within a hidden alcove of Scottish highland, has been the British Isles' mainstay for magical education since its founders had begun their charge of taking disciples and spreading their wizardly ways. The founders, having separated their houses by value and virtue, could not have foreseen the vast and interrelated markets that would be birthed within the castle walls from anything as mundane as self-experimentation with homemade potion-making, to ragtag spellwork intending to accelerate the fermentation of peaches and honey to make sweet mead to be shared among schoolmates. Some of these activities form a poisonous layer of schoolyard realpolitik— others among to a harmless sphere of socialization, a means by which young wizards and witches immerse themselves in the distinctly austere atmosphere, which stresses independence and community.

Introduction  
Within Hogwarts history, there have been multiple spates of substance usage that have augmented the structure of day-to-day life, often pressing the professors to elect a person responsible for investigation of quotidian castle goings-ons, and if necessary, to separate students from this usage if it poses a significant threat to the school's grander function. That position, which has undergone many separate and distinct titles, all with the same purview has most recently been deemed High Inquisitor, fills much more a figurative role than the despotic tyrant the person donning that title would necessarily wish, or attempt, to posture themself. Of course, over the course of the school's lifetime, the position of High Inquisitor, or Moral Dauphin, or Steward-at-Arms, or Seneschal, has only been invoked a grand total of nine times, usually in response to an inner conflict borne from the student corpus, or in more recent years, as a ludicrous form of course correction superimposed upon a locale that wholly lacks form beyond the natural warp and woof of time.  
The fourth of this line of wizards, a 17th-century wizard by the name of Helmut Irpotentia, is arguably the most famous of the Hogwarts High Inquisitor line, taking the title of Dauphin upon himself from his original post of Arithmancy to confront the student body for, amongst other things, the breeding and sale of toads medicated and reared on large quantities of Synesthesolu, a pre-18th century potion utilized as a chirurgical aid for its anesthetic and delirient properties. The animals themselves, simple common toads, had purportedly mutated from continual dosage of the draught, changing from their original brown and green to become technicolor, with some specimens growing to 22 centimeters in length. Their most fascinating new feature included a kind of natural toxin exuded from within their mucus, which quickly garnered a following for its own psychotropic effects, resembling an extraordinarily potent Synesthesolu draught if ingested. The mucus was packaged in normal potion phials, which, at their onset began selling for handfuls of silver amongst the more exploratory and impulsive students, quickly inflating to be as common as parchment quills, yet available at half the price. Irpotentia attempted to institute a transparency policy for students, checking robes for spare phials and developing a range of inquisitorial charms to discern the presence of the substance. He would also go on to record his efforts in a journal, as well as his procedure and an extremely embellished view of his office, respectively, for future Inquisitors and other individuals holding a similar post to draw upon.  
Naturally, Irpotentia's efforts, while creative in the areas of the development of surveillance upon Hogwarts students, were both futile and pointless. Irpotentia's own misgivings were not solely constrained by the furor to curtail what he perceived as a “moral panick,” sweeping the school, but yet by flaws within his own inquisitorial structure. Focalizing the issue of the students purchasing and holding phials of the dissociative mucus, to be later used as additives in pumpkin juice for a weekend kick, he set upon a school a rigorous search-and-seizure protocol to be executed daily, once in the morning and once after dinner. Students carrying the materiel were generally not punished past a point of detention— maybe going so far as to pen a letter home if the Dauphin assumed a drug problem. The cheap phials students carried could easily be disposed of, and only kept enough for a single dose apiece, ensuring that suppliers would never be found. Irpotentia attempted to begin using truth serums upon students to yield answers, and was rebuffed by his efforts by the other Hogwarts faculty for the waste of expensive and valuable school materials.   
The students responsible for the advent of the 17th century Toad Incidence were ultimately its resolution. At its height, Synesthesolu toad slime was so popular that the secondary and tertiary industries, of first years to smuggle packages of disposable phials and sealing wax, was actually more lucrative than the psychotropic mucus, or the original Synesthesolute needed to nurse the tadpole. Meanwhile, the toad breeders suddenly found themselves with a surplus of aggressive, large, fast-breeding toads, many of them producing such a strong toxin in their skin that even touching them once, without necessary dragonhide gloves, would be enough to bring upon a dissociative episode. Both Irpotentia, and his gang of hand-picked and deputized students, occupied with constantly weeding out the packaged substance within the student body, were consistently fooled by the simplistic practice of students Transfiguring their toads into large black stones and back during dormitorial search-and-seizure days. The more rare and dangerous ingredients needed for brewing Synesthesolute, such as Runespoor venom, were either stolen from the Potions department, or recouped in from outside sources, using an elaborate system of trained ravens to place dead drops in areas of the Astronomy tower and on the grounds. The resourcefulness of rulebreaking vastly outstripped what Irpotentia confiscated via owl post and on the person of the students.  
Historical records disagreeing with Irpotentia's odd methods attribute the end of the 1613-1616 Toad Incidence to the toad breeders themselves, who eventually became exasperated with the toads' astonishingly fast reproductive rate, eventually releasing a community of nearly three hundred and forty Synesthesolu toads into the loch and its surrounding areas. To this day, the black toads of Welleslock survive as their much smaller variants.  
Therefore, the anatomy of the evolution of the system to begin with, and its effect upon the Hogwarts student corpus, was an ingenious system, too large for the constraints of simply Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, yet its simplicity, its autonomy, constituted a natural magical exploration, pioneered by and for the students themselves, to experiment and venture into the world of substance within a controlled environment. Where Irpotentia viewed the problem as a moral calculus, to be expertly extracted by a deft and strong supervisory presence, the entire issue of psychotropic toad breeding itself, its rise, peak, wane, and natural fall, is a stellar epistle of the community and environment that Hogwarts itself strove to crystallize. It is as much Hogwarts as Saturday Quidditch or the Halloween feast, and the Toad Incidence consists of only one such example.  
Upon the subject of community, there is much to elaborate. I have condensed my findings into a grand spread of contemporary drug culture at Hogwarts, starting with the houses themselves and the communities they propagate. On a house-to-house basis, each has evolved significantly differently since the days of the Fourth Inquisitor and his bumbling efforts.

Gryffindor  
Home to the most boisterous activities, the house of Godric Gryffindor prides itself on its courage, strength, and ability to tackle adversity.  
Gryffindor represents the sphere of the most impulsive degree of drug usage on Hogwarts' grounds; where Ravenclaw is calculating and Hufflepuff is cautious, Gryffindor tends to pool its strength in excess, celebrating with large get-togethers in a general show of common house welfare. Notably enough, Gryffindor is the only house to throw full parties on the nights following Quidditch matches, usually with a lot of common alcohol within larger spaces, often moving their rowdy saturnalia out of the common room and down the hallways, in abandoned classrooms, or, in this writer's memory, on the Quidditch field at midnight on a clear Saturday night, to share a glass or four of embermead and copious good feelings with one another.  
The impulses endemic to Gryffindor manifest themselves in their activities: drinking games, including Drunken Wizard's Chess, intoxicated Quidditch, and often, drunken dueling. Members of Gryffindor are most likely to seek out other house get-togethers, which are not typically segregated by house, unless thrown by certain cadres of Slytherin students, wherein the house rivalry runs extraordinarily deep. The revelry of Gryffindor is itself intoxicating; their parties swell in size to critical mass, often punctured by an alert to the caretaker or broken up by a sudden need to take someone to the hospital wing (not an uncommon occurrence, when a pair of impaired Quidditch players decide to play a broomless game of 'Dodge the Bludger'). Often, hand in hand with this is sexual experimentation, a subject which I will devote a grander scale to in a much larger, separate essay.  
Procurement of these substances is easy for Gryffindors, who have a stunning propensity for finding secret passageways out of the castle and into the nearby village of Hogsmeade. Younger students are more likely to resort to thievery, not without its share of cleverness, but less effective than the more experienced students. It is not uncommon for a joint commission of Ravenclaw and Gryffindor students to set up kegs of butterbeer and elderflower wine in cellars or within the passageways, enchant them with a complex Transdispersion charm, and have a pitcher that flows with liquid somewhere in the castle until the keg runs dry, eliminating the need to bring the canisters into the castle and incriminate themselves. It is also not uncommon for there to be collusion within Hogsmeade as well; a proprietor, a cellar boy, a serving-girl who will refill the keg on their end when it begins to run dry in exchange for money, favors, or whatever strikes their fancy.  
Beyond the normal party fare, there are much smaller markets within Gryffindor for substances outside of alcohol, but experimental substances are uncommon, and unlikely found within the Gryffindor corpus. A slew of nonrecreational mind-altering substances had found their way into the current of the house, although they rarely engender conflict between houses or with the faculty.   
Exceptions always abound. Love Potions, always in common demand within Hogwarts, have been found in alarming quantities in the possession of Gryffindors, and may be the most dangerous substance that Gryffindors partake of. Gryffindor, by far, sees the highest traffic of Love Potions, with rarely half of the confiscated substance yielding anything stronger than a dull heartthrob, yet at very worst, causing direct strife between classmates, violence, dangerous and negligent action. The most notable incident within memory for Hogwarts occurred at the 1964 Halloween Banquet, when several pitchers of beverages for the Gryffindor table, serially dosed with an extremely potent brew of Philiocatax (by a gifted but ultimately disgruntled Gryffindor sixth-year witch) ended in utter disaster for most of the castle's inhabitants, erupting into an all-out fray within the confines of the Great Hall and lasting nearly twenty minutes. The damage sustained to the Great Hall, which an extremely glib Hogwarts Transfiguration professor referred to as the Helen-of-Troy Battle, was easily mended, although several of the more jinxed first- and second-year students were kept in the Hospital Wing for the remainder of the week. The perpetrator was summarily expelled, but was later readmitted to Hogwarts two years later to finish her schooling, after consultation of therapeutic resources.  
There is one market, fast-expanding, that sees traffic during the Quidditch season for performance-enhancing substances, treated with a much greater degree of scrutiny by the Hogwarts faculty than simple roughhousing. There have been exceptions to this, such as when a Gryffindor Beater came into possession of a dangerously large quantity of Re'em blood in 1932, renowned for its property to grant immense strength. An investigation was launched, and the player in possession of said substance, in violation of the Ministry of Magic's Regulations of Magical Games and Sports, was heard by a court of witches and wizards outside of Hogwarts.  
The smallest and most peculiar market was for a particular kind of dosed sweet causing illness when ingested, sold by a pair of particularly entrepreneurial Gryffindor seventh-year vendors beginning in 1995. The aim of these sweets were to intentionally cause an illness to get out of normal academic duties. The two would later go on to syndicate their invention, resulting in its immediate ban from Hogwarts grounds.  
Naturally, Gryffindor parties are robust but short-lived, usually collapsing under their own weight or so front-loaded with activity that their participants tire themselves out, explosive but instantaneous, twice as bright but half as long. The impulse and fire within the chest of the Gryffindor lion is quick to act, and this has always been a defining factor of this house's goings-on.

Ravenclaw  
Ravenclaw House is consistently home to much of the intellectual clout of the school; this, like the rash bravery of Gryffindor, is manifested within its clandestine and complex drug-related rituals.  
Above all else, Ravenclaw consistently practices its predilection for stimulants and study aides, the grand majority of which are manufactured within the house and circulated across all houses of the castle, with this market particularly valuable to the academic environment of Hogwarts. At its peak during exam periods twice a year, the strongest implements marketed by Ravenclaw seventh-years and consumed by Ravenclaw fifth-years can fetch a hefty sum for their manufacturer and distributor. A simple modified Quick-Wit Boon potion, impregnated within ordinary toffee, can eliminate its user's need for sleep for up to 13 hours, during which their mental acuity is roughly two to threefold the normal amount; despite the disastrous side effects of over-dosing with the potion, the popularity of the potion and its stupendous effect (with some users being able to read from two books simultaneously) finds a home in most upper-class dormitories, where it is consumed sparingly to get through rough homework evenings. At non-exam time, a single Quick-Wit toffee can be sold for five to six Sickles, yet rises radically to two or three Galleons when midterms approach. Quick-Wit Boon is simple to manufacture in normal quantities, but denatures within a month and a half, with the artistry of brewing the potion coming from being able to grade its potency, to keep it from the prying eyes of the faculty. Its ingredients are somewhat expensive, and much of the cost of manufacturing is deducted from the revenue of the dealers.  
Expedientius candies make up the bulk of the lower-sold product, more actively noticeable by Hogwarts faculty, as it causes the ingestor to move unnaturally fast. Users are able to complete tasks like reading and writing in a much shorter timespan, but tasks requiring more deliberation, including spellwork and potion-making, are liable to suffer as a result of the user's accelerated sense of impatience. An infamous side effect of Expedientius is the augmenting of speech, to sound like what some students describe as “a cross between a turkey and some sort of buzzing insect;” the Ravenclaw common room, normally silent at exam time despite being full of studying students, is usually filled with this kind of pidgin sound, with some Ravenclaw Expedientius dealers offering to perform a free and painless Silencing Charm on their housemates to allow them to study in the library without alarming others. It is considered unwise, within Ravenclaw popular substance culture, to take an exam while under the effects of Expedientius, as it is extremely difficult to act normally, and even users attempting to sit still will vibrate noticeably. Eating and drinking while under the effects of the potion are both possible, but difficult.  
The third most propagated study aid and stimulant is Thymis Tincture, usually strained into small dropper-bottles to be taken alongside a normal beverage. Thymis aids in memory formation, helping the user to not forget the various ephemera they may encounter in their studies and generally is considered the silver bullet for multiple-choice and identification exam questions. At high potency, however, the user has trouble not forgetting anything, often suffering severe psychological distress by consistently replaying embarrassing moments over and over in their heads, unable to distance themselves mentally. The counter-charm is simple, although information learned under the effects of the potion is not easily forgotten; depression and low self-image may follow the usage of Thymis, with some Ravenclaw students attempting Memory Charms on themselves or each other to wipe the memory of using the drug.  
Recreationally, Ravenclaw sees a high market in experimental concoctions, most notably hallucinogens. Wizard-made hallucinogens can be wildly variegated in their effects, some creating residual feelings such as loss of proprioception, euphoria, wild and adventurous thoughts, or finding everything around you much more humorous than normal. Others stress active hallucinogens, color-changing vision, dissociation, and extreme introspection, often culminating in ego death. The Hogwarts market for hallucinogens is enigmatic and strangely ingenious: hallucinogens are usually manufactured on a batch-by-batch basis, each individual potion-maker utilizing different ingredients and viciously guarding their secrets (a trait somewhat shared between Slytherin and Ravenclaw drug-making), often garnering no more than thirty to forty doses a potion. The potion-makers are nearly always seventh-years, top of their class in Potions; their degree of magical experimentation with substance is astounding, almost certainly a product of their environs, which call for a different product each term.  
For this sub-strata of upperclassmen, there can be as few as two in a year, even as many as ten. They construct a market that moves downwards, mostly through Ravenclaw and Slytherin, which is peculiarly friendly in its competition; some years stress a focus upon the budget needed to create the most active substance, while some years stress duration and amount of residuality. The markets, oddly enough, do not cross, there is never violence, and potion-makers tend not to sabotage one another to slip ahead, relying instead on pure intellect and creativity. Muggle-born witches and wizards have had the most oddly simple method of reverse-engineering their products, receiving packages of common Muggle hallucinations by owl post and studying their effects rigorously, whereas wizard-raised students begin from a base of a more solidly defined magical substance archetype and slowly tweak the potion into a usable material.  
These substances, wildly creative and experimental as they are, are not without their dangers. Potency can be variegated, sometimes enough to hospitalize students or send them into fits. These such episodes occur at the exasperation of the head nurse, who must concoct an antidote specifically tailored to these effects, although essence of Mandrake root is purported to fix a main suite of symptoms and usually cure dissociation.  
Ravenclaw parties, not usually large in scale, are generally relegated to groups of small friends working on a common project. Certain cliques prefer different substances, and as such, tastes are wholly differentiated across Ravenclaw, with some joining Gryffindor parties and others preferring to sit in their room with a friend and listen to music on modified Muggle music-players. Inter-house parties often see Ravenclaws with the most staying power, able to keep awake up the latest and usually willing to try the most drastic drugs, assuming that they have a solid idea of what they are going to experience.  
The ingenuity and intellect of Ravenclaw gives rise to breakthroughs in substance culture, often responsible for its highest highs and its lowest lows, its most amazing concoctions and creations and most dangerous toxins. The impact of Rowena Ravenclaw's house is integral and undisputed.

Hufflepuff  
Hufflepuff is the most welcoming and friendly house among the four, its inhabitants picked for their loyalty, their attitude, and their patience and sensitivity. The house is arguably the least exploratory in its substance usage, which is usually familiarized between friend groups and very widespread.  
Hufflepuff's common room is spacious, with lots of magical sunlight and potted plants, with one corridor running along to the kitchens and another leading upstairs to the castle proper; its construction is quaintly befitting the habits of its populace, who prefer Herbological subtances. Overwhelmingly, the environment of the house prefers flowers, herbs, and roots that can be either smoked or ingested. The catalog of substances cultivated and tried by the Hufflepuff corpus is multitudinous, but ultimately all roads to the cultivation of an attitude of comfort and lethargy.  
Jewelweed plants, known for antifungal properties and flourishing within the Scottish loch's climate, grow abundantly within the castle. The flowers, when cured and smoked, create a relaxing body high, a practice that is legalistically banned by Hogwarts ordinance but tacitly ignored. Within Hufflepuff itself, there are house-created regulations on where within the house the substance can be consumed, with these regulations created and recontextualized with the start of every year. The smoking of Jewelweed is a practice that often emblematizes the experience of being in Hufflepuff House, seen by its denizens as a kind of soft “rite of initiation,” where upperclassmen traditionally invite third years to join them with a bowl of Jewelweed within the first several months of the first term. It is not normally considered proper to provide second- or first-years with Jewelweed substance; partaking of the drug is known to be habit-forming, but not outwardly hazardous or deleterious to the health of the user. Overusage of the plant can result in couchlock and an increased appetite, but the common room's proximity to the kitchens ensures that sustenance is always within acquiescence. Jewelweed smoke appears bright purple and leaves a shimmering quality upon areas where it has sooted; it is not uncommon for a first-time user of Jewelweed to cough, causing shimmering nostrils and faces. Its scintillation is well-understood by heavy users can be manipulated with a wand, with some seventh-years holding informal competitions wherein they can twist the smoke into recognizable images. Jewelweed is used prolifically by Diviners and Seers.  
Mallowsweet is another herb partaken of by the Hufflepuff corpus, a mildly hallucinogenic herb with a thick, woodlike smell traditionally used in centaur stargazing. Some upperclassmen prefer the plant to Jewelweed for its differential effects, including a strong head high when used as incense, but often blossoming to stronger introspection and residual hallucination when smoked. At higher doses, it can cause interesting and unpredictable effects upon a user's magic, changing their strengths and weaknesses around for short periods of time, even sometimes manifesting in its users wandlessly and uncontrollable akin to prepubescent magical flourishing, such as levitation, clairvoyance, teleportation, color-changing, disappearance, hypnotic suggestion, and limited but clear communication with animals. Hufflepuff is its main consumer, although it is often utilized within Ravenclaw's bootleg potion-making. Upperclassmen hone their ability to consume Mallowsweet correctly, to yield the kind of high that they are attempting to procure. Unfortunately, Mallowsweet grows within extreme conditions, requiring difficult soil nutrition and normally only cultivated within the confines of centaur reservations, wherein its Restricted status as a Class A Non-Tradeable Substance by the Ministry of Magic is exempt. Often, students wanting to try Mallowsweet must brave the inner woods of the Forbidden Forest to find patches where the tall, austere yellow stalks grow in the shade of oak and dogwood trees, to grab a small cutting and spirit it away back to the Greenhouses where it can be safely grown. It is considered both customary and practical to pass on one's Mallowsweet plants to sixth-years when seventh-years graduate from Hogwarts, as the plants flourish within the magically climate-controlled locale of the Greenhouse.  
Other plants include: Angel's Trumpet, known to Muggle substance culture as datura flower, grown but rarely consumed outright due to its toxic nature; Gurdyroot, often associated with spiritual protection and thought to ward off demons, containing a slight narcotic effect if its extract is consumed in large doses; wormwood, having a delirient and hallucinogenic effect when its infusion is consumed, toxic in large doses; henbane, having an intense anesthetic effect among unpleasant side effects; Alihotsy, whose leaves can be eaten to induce a strong, persistent euphoria; and polypody, a kind of fern used as a kind of home-brewed medication for its anti-anxiety properties, but prone to causing complete emotional atonality if used to often or too much. There are more, but they often form a flavor-of-the-week drug alongside the mainstays of Jewelweed and Mallowsweet, which make up Hufflepuff plant dealers' bread and butter.  
Hufflepuff parties are decentralized, with little roving groups pursuing their own methods of relaxation, like Ravenclaw, but usually venturing forth into the castle for brief walks in the corridors, visiting the Greenhouses and the kitchens. They tend to occur earlier in the day on weekends, starting slow and dragging for hours at a time, shifting from activity to activity in a kind of stupor, seeing seventh-years pairing off and inconspicuously leaving groups to rejoin them much larger on in the night. Hufflepuffs have a strange tendency to fall asleep on one another in piles of students, often aided by a substance-induced slothfulness, in the common room on couches. On hot days, it is not uncommon to see Hufflepuff seventh-years seal their dormitory with a curtain of magically thickened air, open their windows, and fill the room with Mallowsweet incense, whose effects do not usually last longer than an hour, and simply talk about life, listen to music, or bond as housemates. Stay up later into the night, and you will find roving bands of Jewelweed-intoxicated fourth-years, emerging from the common room to make their way down to the kitchens, having taken care to Transfigure their glass or wooden smoking pipes into other inanimate objects such as oddly-shaped potion pestles.  
The relationship of Hufflepuff to the Hogwarts faculty is worth noting for its eccentricity. While it is not known by much of the student corpus that the stupendously delicious food is produced by house-elf labor, it is not uncommon to see Hufflepuff fifth-years joining with the house-elves in the kitchens, banding together to make ambitious culinary challenges, and inviting house-elves back to the Hufflepuff dormitories to share in Jewelweed and Alihotsy. Most of the kitchen staff, in the general trend of house-elf self-effacement, declines in these outings, but some are welcome guests. Wormwood in particular is considered a house-elf delicacy; its soporific and hallucinogenic effects are grossly pronounced in elfin users, and despite the professed tendency of Hogwarts to attempt to pay their house-elf staff in wage, many elves still resort to a kind of inter-elfin bartering system, which some, after much intense and fierce negotiation to dispel any and all traces of insult, allow with Hufflepuff students to pay for certain herbs. It is also not uncommon to see Hufflepuff's friends in the kitchen leaving out heaping plates of savory and sweet treats for their intoxicated companions to partake of. Students in a Jewelweed haze tend toward intense flavors like bergamot treacle and sweet blackberry pudding, while Mallowsweet users prefer interesting and variegated textures, such as twelve-layer fudge or muffins full of pecans and bacon; both are always accounted by the house-elves in their extraprofessional cooking.  
Hufflepuff plant and herb dealers primarily grow their plants within the security of Greenhouses 4 and 6; henbane, normally, is grown in Greenhouse 3, and wormwood can be found in 2. Collusion with the Herbology professor is almost expected of Hufflepuff students, given the house's longstanding history of Herbological researchers, and this collusion functions not as a result of bribery, but a warm-hearted extracurricular tutelage. If the professor comes by a glass jar full of properly cured Jewelweed flower, they know that they have done their job correctly. Very few Hogwarts professors partake of substances alongside their students, considering it a breach of ethics, but Hufflepuff and its all-inclusive atmosphere form a much more warm and comfortable environment for student-professor fraternization. On all levels, it is good-natured and professional.  
Hufflepuff is sometimes mocked by other houses' students for being dull, but the locale that Hufflepuff intends to cultivate is non-stressful and warm, prizing sensitivity, emotionality, and inclusivity, with its students serving as the pure epitome of Hogwarts relaxation and comfort. Their substance usage does not shake the foundations of the castle, nor does it go unnoticed completely, forming a self-regulating balancing act that has been well ingrained as a tenet of the house and of the castle. If anything, Hufflepuff represents the sphere of where things are least likely to go wrong; within such a space there has been a great deal of effort invested.

Slytherin  
The most notorious of the Hogwarts houses, Slytherin values ambition, cunning, and cleverness to raise a crop of students the ingenuity to gain and hold power. This is often conflated hand-in-hand with the tendency of the house's denizens to be prejudiced against Muggle-born students, both inside and outside of Slytherin.  
Slytherin is not particularly characterized by a singular form of substance usage, oddly enough, but rather a dense array of all substances within the castle; often upperclassmen will be as willing to partake of Ravenclaw-brewed experimental potions as they are to swill down homemade embermead in a party setting. Slytherin is, however, characterized by their willingness to employ certain substances in poisoning of fellow classmates, a process which is to be wholly frowned upon.  
Slytherin parties come in several different variants, some formed by upperclassmen cliques mainly populated by pureblood witches and wizards, to act a high-society kind of style, complete with traditional dresswear, usually not open to students from other houses or Muggle-borns. Muggle-born Slytherins, on the other hand, form calculating groups of intense-minded individuals attempting to reach some kind of self-obliterative high. Whereas half the house is content to reinforce their own notions of status, the other half is arguably the most exploratory cadre of substance-using students within the school's student corpus. It is not uncommon for pureblood Slytherin seventh-years to bemoan the unpleasantness of the nearly congealed and vinegarized rice wine they are sipping from tall glasses; it is also not uncommon to see a Muggle-born Slytherin drink a full flagon of millet beer with several Expedientius candies submerged within. One end of the spectrum is concerned with the maintenance of class and blood relations, while the other one forms a bulwark of the most honest critics of the products of drug manufacturing within the castle.  
A common Slytherin party may start in an empty classroom, filled with a few raucous students who invite their fiercer Ravenclaw friends, yet it is only a matter of time until Gryffindors show up to mingle and usurp the scene, causing slight consternation in the environment until all settles. The more intense the drug usage, generally the quicker to conflict and its wane, the intensity of short-lived confrontation between the longstanding rivals of lion and serpent generally falling to a dull roar. Oftentimes these confrontations are oddly staged by wayward Slytherin girls, normally expeditious fifth- and sixth-years, who will just as quickly slip into a Gryffindor party for the free booze as they will to start conflict within Slytherin soirees.  
The goings-on of party culture within Hogwarts, barely spoken of in outside academia, forms a grand vanguard of pubescent and adolescent growth both for the students and for the kinds of environments they cultivate. Romantic and interpersonal dramas thrive as Slytherins grip hold of parties and get-togethers, often displaying a more brave and foolish loyalty towards one another than Hufflepuffs or Gryffindors, and the quickest to organize structured revenge attempts against those perpetrators of their friends' aggrievement.  
It is important to note drug manufacturing and sale when speaking of the Slytherin corpus. While they are not directly linked or characterized with any particular substance culture beyond that of their gatherings-construction, Slytherins are wholly responsible for the creation of the inter-house substance market and the capital needed to fund some of the more costly ventures of the Ravenclaws and Gryffindors. Who exactly, then, would be responsible for greasing the wheels in Hogsmeade, opening up smuggling connections with Ministry siblings, and allowing for the kinds of environs wherein such experimental manufacturing could possibly exist? The grasp that Slytherins exert on the substance trade is non-negligible; their python's coil locks together the Hufflepuff raw production of certain ingredients for Ravenclaw potions, of Gryffindor need of Ravenclaw markets, of Ravenclaw's ingress into Gryffindor and Hufflepuff's social spheres.  
Within the Slytherin stock itself, there is a rigid hierarchy ruled at the top by the most cunning and ruthless seventh-years, a fiercely meritocratic system in nigh-constant flux for power, with its associated usurpation and reclamations. The sixth- and fifth-years are advisory, and associate with other suppliers, sometimes with the dealers themselves; the third-years are runners, bringing product to those who purchase it through the Slytherin channels. Second-years and first-years who desperately want to be a part of the business form the gofers and couriers, delivering the messages the seventh-years dare not deliver in public, keeping an eye out for the forays of professors and for the investigative efforts of the caretaker. The system is so ingenious, so silky in its construction, that to purchase substances through the Slytherin channels often forms the safest and most efficient method of substance acquisition within the school. Hiccups within the power structure are not uncommon, but the market has a way of reassembling itself from leftover pieces, even after the caretaker or the professors have removed the current leader from power.  
It is interesting to note, as well, that Slytherin also forms the most power-hungry strata of students within the school, responsible for direct confrontation of Hogwarts faculty, often to ease pressure on students under disciplinary stress. Punishments by Hogwarts faculty towards drug users are stern but usually simplistic, towards drug distributors fierce, and towards manufacturers and smugglers fatal. Slytherin is also responsible for the method by which faculty continually let off offenders of the substance variety; a number of unknown factors work in their favor, some of which may or may not constitute more unsavory elements of student life. Unsubstantiated claims of blackmail abound.  
Hogsmeade forms a grand channel to the outside world, where witches and wizards can easily acquire most of what they would necessarily need during the school year (although it is treated far more as a holiday outing than a time for grocery shopping), but for Slytherins, it represents a vast market and forum wherein one can make friends with extremely strong connections. Slytherins prize organization very highly; they take to with an uncanny affinity. Usually, the presentation of certain materials gains one ingress into the deeper markets of Hogsmeade, and connection further still into Diagon and Knockturn Alleys; the most customary and easily acquirable is Ashwinder eggs, which can be harvested with several hours' work within or outside the castle, and which constitute an essential ingredient in all Love Potions. Markets within the Hogsmeade sphere consist of a matrix of decentralized traders who seek one another out singly for the exchange of goods; within Knockturn Alley, the traders operate out of certain shops in reliable and fixed places to connect Hogwarts to the larger trade of potion materiel in the wizarding world of the British Isles and beyond. Slytherin is the vanguard to which connects the market of markets.  
The serpent forms channels both seen and unseen, far-reaching and insular, and antagonistic or simply ambitious. For this reason, Slytherin can be felt within all aspects of Hogwarts' substance culture.

Conclusion  
What can be learned from these wizards and witches, so young and full of such vigor? What bright and strange things come to light within those familiar, Scottish castle walls? Substance culture at Hogwarts, a well-understood subject of Hogwarts, so much so that it could become its own class of study, is itself roiling and self-regulating, creating chaos and intense discord but the brightest of friendships. It is part of that youthful experimentation of all wizarding schools. So much is to be learned from the intricacies of the school, of its winding staircases and corridors, but the students, and the culture they promote, remain the most fascinating and valuable subject of it all.


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